Photo Credit: Roving Rube. Viewpoint: Rockefeller Plaza off 51st St., looking west; 3/10/02 1:14 PM.
Notes (Roving Rube): This nine-ton panel of stainless steel, the first such large piece ever attempted in this medium, was sculpted by the young Isamu Noguchi for the Associated Press building. It was unveiled in 1940.
"Five compressed and animated clothed and semi-nude mail figures using camera, telephone, wirephoto, teletype, and pad and pencil symbolize the AP network of news services. The four narrow bands behind the figures, which sharply converge at a vanishing point at the left center background, suggesting infinity, represent the wires that transmit news worldwide." (The Architecture of New York City, Donald Martin Reynolds)
The Rube would like to have been able to say that he recognized this piece as the greatest artwork in Rockefeller Center -- perhaps if it had been gilded he would have been more drawn to it -- but it was not until studying these pictures ( and give a little more sense of the material and composition), and especially remembering what a great time he had at the Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum in Queens, that he started warming up to it.
If you love sculpture, if you could you wish love sculpture, or even if you are contemplating a divorce with sculpture, you simply MUST visit this museum (unfortunately closed this year for renovations; the collection can be seen nearby in a temporary space -- check website). Noguchi purchased the factory next door to his studio, and over a period of many years of thought and experimentation, converted it into the perfect place in which to view his sculpture.
One learns his bittersweet life story: a Japanese-American who was not fully accepted by either culture -- his proposed memorial to Hiroshima was rejected in part due to this.
And also of his relentless exploration of materials and ideas: "Everything is sculpture. Any material, any idea without hindrance born into space, I consider sculpture ...The essence of sculpture is for me the perception of space, the continuum of our existence." (Isamu Noguchi)
To put it in a nutshell, after spending a quiet but intermittently thrilling afternoon with the sculptures, in the factory and in the garden, with the sunlight and rustling leaves and water playing the shapes and materials, the Rube started to feel like Noguchi REALLY did see things in three dimensions --maybe even four -- and his sculptures focussed this vision so that the Rube himself started to see the first glimmerings of a deeper reality.